Naturalism In How To Build A Fire

In the story, How to Build a Fire,” a man and a husky brave the frosty cold on their trek to meet up with the other boys. The man in the story ignores the advice of an old-timer at Sulphur Creek and goes into the below zero, freezing temperatures without a friend. His only companion is his dog, who unwittingly is more of a slave if anything at all. Both the man and the dog face one of the biggest threats imaginable: nature.
Throughout the story, the man stares death straight in the face. For he is ignorant enough to think that he can survive in such a hostile environment. The struggles and difficulties that the man faces are all scenes within the literary genre of naturalism. The story itself is an interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution
that states that life is like a struggle and only the fittest ones can survive. The reoccurring idea throughout the story is that the man is over confident and thinks he can control his own fate, when in reality he is sentencing himself to doom. The story embodies the fact that natural forces predetermine character’s decisions, making him/her act in a particular way.
In conclusion, if a Romantic writer had written this story, the story would be unrealistic and would solely focus on things that you wished happened or what should happen. It is easy to see that throughout the story, that nature holds no regard for man.